M'A'S'H - Mobile Army Sabotage Hotbed
by konarciq
Summary: In the end, we're left with only one possible explanation...


_In the end, we're left with only one possible explanation:_

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 **M*A*S*H**

 **Mobile Army Sabotage Hotbed**

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It was meant to be a temporary camp in the first place. A large encampment, that was meant to hold the thousands and thousands of soldiers the Third Reich would surely capture as the Allies surrendered, was being built on top of the hill outside Hammelburg. But until then, the prisoners they had already needed to be housed somewhere as well. And that's how Stalag 13 came about.

Of course there was no point in building permanent housing when they were going to be moved soon. And thus, the barracks and bunk beds in little Stalag 13 came with a special feature: they all had multiple hinges, that allowed for the huts to be folded into flat packages within minutes.

Of course, with the arrival of Colonel Hogan and the subsequent development of the clandestine sabotage and intelligence unit in Stalag 13, things got a little out of hand.

Hogan's unit was so successful in pulling off the impossible, that London sometimes seemed to forget to look at a map. But Hogan wouldn't be Hogan if he wouldn't find a way to pull it off.

"Blow up a chemical factory outside Zittau? No problem, sir. Consider it done! Papa Bear out."

Kinch gave him a skeptical look as he put down the microphone. "Sir..." he hesitated. "Do you happen to know where Zittau is?"

"No, as a matter of fact I don't." Hogan grinned. "But I have a feeling you're going to tell me."

"Zittau," Kinch said with emphasis, "is located in the far eastern corner where the German, Czech and Polish border meet. That's hundreds of miles from here."

For a moment, Hogan looked seriously taken aback. But it didn't last long. "Well, then we'll just have to convince Klink to move the camp there."

Kinch's eyebrows shot up. "Move the camp?! With permission, sir, how are you going to do that?"

A grin. "With my disarming wit of course. And the acting talents of my crew. If you can find us a suitable location near Zittau to move the camp to?"

And indeed. That evening, he came storming into Klink's office, looking absolutely horrified. "Kommandant! Kommandant Klink!"

"Was ist los?" cried the guard on duty by the door. "You can't just go running into the Kommandant's office like that!"

"Well, it's an emergency!" Hogan gave back.

That made the guard calm down. "Ah! An emergency!" And satisfied, he took his place again outside the door, proudly repeating the word to himself. "E-mer-gen-cy. E-mer-gen-cy."

"Kommandant!" Hogan now burst into Klink's private office. "Kommandant, there's an emergency!"

Klink sighed, and put down his pencil. "What is it now, Hogan."

"LeBeau has been bitten by a snake! And it's spreading!"

"What?" Klink jumped up. "Get the medic! I'll call for antidote from town to be delivered! What kind of snake was it?"

"A slimy, scaly, slithery one."

"Hogan..."

"How should I know? One moment everything's fine, and the next I hear LeBeau cry out in agony, and see him dropping to the ground. Our medic Wilson found the tell-tale signs of a snake bite on his leg. And it's spreading fast - the last I saw, we had fifty-three men in the infirmary!"

"Fifty-three...!" Klink shuddered. "There must be an army of snakes out there...!"

"There is!" Hogan confirmed. "Kommandant, you need to do something. Quick! The Geneva Convention..."

Klink paled instantly. "You want me to fight off those snakes?"

"That would be a most honourable offer, sir, but I can't ask that sacrifice from you. I mean, chances are you'd get killed instantly by a dozen lethal snake bites. We can't have that. What would become of your no-escape record when you're dead?"

"Yes." Klink breathed out in relief. "Perhaps I..."

"We need to move the camp, sir. Now!" Hogan urged.

A monocle fell down on the desk. "Move the camp? Are you out of your mind, Hogan? We can't just move the camp!"

"Well, how else are you going to protect us from those killer snakes? The Geneva Convention says..."

"Yes, I know what the Geneva Convention says. But..."

"Why don't you call General Burkhalter? I'm sure he'd agree that we need to move the camp. Somewhere far away from here. If only to ensure the safety of the prisoners."

Klink hesitated.

"Quick, sir! The men are dying in droves out there!"

"Alright." Klink picked up the phone, and asked the operator to connect him with General Burkhalter's headquarters.

Hogan heard the phone ring a couple of times, and then the familiar (too familiar) nasal sound of Burkhalter's voice was heard. _"Ja? General Burkhalter here."_

"Ah, General Burkhalter, how nice to speak to you!"

 _"Klink, shut up and tell me what is the matter. You are interrupting my dinner."_

"Yes sir. Shutting up, sir." A jittery glance at Hogan.

 _"Well?"_

"Well, you see, sir, we have a bit of an emergency here. An army of killer snakes is attacking the camp, and I can no longer guarantee the safety of the prisoners. Or that of my own men. Request permission to move the camp, sir."

 _"Move the camp?!"_ Burkhalter screeched. _"Klink, have you lost your mind?"_

"No sir." A nervous twitter. "Not yet. But I will if I can't get away from these snakes posthaste..."

 _"Very well then."_ Burkhalter seemed to acquiesce in the idea. _"Let me see what suitable sites are available."_ There was some rustling of paper, and then Burkhalter's voice sounded again. _"Ah, this one will do very nicely. Just outside the little hamlet of Russland, near Grafeld. How does that sound?"_

Klink shuddered, and turned big scared rabbit eyes at Hogan. "I'm sorry, sir. I couldn't possibly go there. I'm... I'm allergic to that place."

 _"Are you now. Well, how about the Zittau area then? I have a nice empty field there that would be just perfect for your little camp."_

"Zittau?" Klink shivered. "That's halfway to the Russian front!"

" _Well, it's either that, or brave your allergy in Russland,"_ Burkhalter said.

He really had no choice, had he... "Alright, sir. We will go to Zittau."

 _"Good. I will send driving instructions by express right away. And Klink..."_

"Yes, General Burkhalter?"

 _"Make sure there are no escapes during transport, understood? If there are, I will hold you personally responsible!"_

Klink shrank back. "Jawohl, General Burkhalter."

There was a click on the line, and slowly, Klink put down the receiver.

"And?" Hogan inquired impatiently. "Shall we start packing?"

"Yes, Hogan." Klink sighed and sank down in his chair. "It seems this is the end of Stalag 13..."

"Of course not," rallied Hogan. "We'll just open up again in Zittau."

But, "We can't," Klink muttered.

"Why not?" Hogan was genuinely stymied. "You're coming with us, aren't you?"

Klink looked up. "Hogan, Zittau is in district III. If we move the camp there, we won't be Stalag 13 anymore; we will be Stalag 3. Another Stalag 3, I presume, for there is already one there, in Sagan."

"Two Stalag 3s? Now that's just plain confusing," Hogan declared indignantly. "Besides, we're bringing our own camp, our own prisoners, our own Kommandant... The toughest Kommandant in all of Germany no less... and then we can't even keep our own name? _No one escapes from Stalag 3..._ Doesn't have much of a ring to it, does it...?"

"No. You're right, Hogan." Klink sat up a little prouder. "For the sake of avoiding confusion, we ought to keep our own name." He gave his senior prisoner a sideway look. "Don't you have some packing to do?"

"Me?!" Hogan straightened up. "It's your camp! You do the packing!"

Klink leaned back in his chair. He looked awfully smug. "Hogan, the longer you protest, the longer it will be before your men are safe in Zittau. Now you wouldn't want that on your conscience, would you?"

For once, Hogan was outmanoeuvered. "But can't the guards at least help take the huts down? It's a German construction - too advanced for us poor Allies."

"They can supervise," Klink granted magnamanously.

"Fine. As long as they do their bit." He opened the door. "Well, I'll go packing then. Perhaps in the meantime, you can organize the necessary trucks for the men and the huts?"

Klink's eyes widened, but before he could open his mouth, Hogan had disappeared.

* * *

"All set," Hogan announced when he came back to barracks 2. "We're bugging out and moving to Zittau before dark. General Burkhalter, where exactly are we going?"

Kinch grinned and got out the map. "Here. A nice flat field surrounded by woods just northwest of Zittau, by a village named..." He peered at the map. "Oberoder..." He frowned.

"Ober oder unter," Newkirk joked.

"Let me see that." Carter bent down over the map, too. "Ober-oder-witz-Ober-dorf. Oberoberitzoderborf. No, wait... Oderober... Oderoder..."

"Let's just call it Hammelburg," Hogan decided. He looked around. "Are you guys packed yet?"

"Yes, sir. We're ready to take down the huts," Newkirk reported.

"The radio taken down, too?"

"Yes. We were able to divide the antenna into different pieces and hide them in the mattresses. But what are we going to do with the tunnels, sir?" Kinch asked.

Hogan shrugged. "We'll just leave them. Who knows - we might come back here."

"But we'll need a few tunnels in the new Stalag 13 as well," Newkirk pointed out. "That's going to take ages to dig new ones."

"No." Hogan folded his arms across his chest. "Once we're in the new camp, we're going to get a special delivery from London."

Carter's jaw dropped. "They're gonna do an airdrop of tunnels?"

A grin. "You're warm. Now let's get cracking in taking these huts down. I want to blow up that Zittau factory as soon as possible." He looked around. "Where's LeBeau?"

"Still in the infirmary with Wilson. Just in case the Kommandant decided to check up on your story," Kinch explained. "And Addison is out of camp with one of the motorcycles, to deliver General Burkhalter's instructions."

Unhooking a few latches was all it took to be able to let the huts fold in on themselves. Klink had kept his word and organized a few flat trucks, and a multitude of hands made it for fairly easy work to load the folded barracks onto the trucks.

Klink was supervising, too, standing on a dais and constantly waving a stick about to scare off any killer snakes. "No, no, no! My quarters should be loaded last!" he fretted to Schultz for the hundredth time. "Surely they shouldn't be flattened by something like the cooler!" Once again, he spied around for the sign of any snakes. There! Was that...? No. Just a branch. Or there? No. Just a shadow. "Hogan!" he called.

"Yes, Kommandant?"

"Where are the snakes? I've been standing here for nearly an hour, and I haven't seen a snake yet!"

Hogan looked around. "You know, Kommandant, you're right. It looks like they scarpered." He shrugged. "Must have been the sudden activity. Snakes are generally very shy creatures, aren't they."

Klink's face brightened. "But then we don't have to move the camp, do we!"

Hogan stared at him in full awe. "You want to go against General Burkhalter's orders?! Boy, are you brave, Kommandant!"

"Um..." Klink shrank a bit. "Well, maybe not. I mean, he's a general, and... well, we need to make sure the prisoners are safe, right?"

"Right."

"So we better go ahead with the move then. What do you say, Hogan?"

"I'm with you there, sir. Anything for the safety of my men. The Geneva Convention..."

"Yeah, yeah..." Klink waved him away. "Well, are we ready to leave? Schultz?"

"Jawohl, Herr Kommandant?"

"All prisoners ready and accounted for?"

"Jawohl, Herr Kommandant. And Herr Schnitzer has loaded the dogs in his truck as well. They will follow us."

"Good. Good. Then tell the guards to pull up all the fences and fence posts and load them onto the last truck, and then we are ready to go to the new Stalag 13."

So with the prisoners and their belongings loaded onto a few trucks, before sunset indeed the entire column rolled out of what used to be the main gate and onto the Hammelburg Road in the direction of the unpronounceable Oberoderwitz-Oberdorf, for the time-being nicknamed Hammelburg.


End file.
